Year 2011 Archive
Here we archive “Here’s A Thought”
items from the year 2011.
To return to the current year, click here.
Addional years’ archives are also accessible from the same page.
December 25, 2011
Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.
December 18, 2011
The wave does not need to die to become water. She is already water.
December 11, 2011
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
December 4, 2011
Remember never to fear the power of evil more than your trust in the power and love of God.
Hermas
one of the Seventy
Apostles
November 27, 2011
I distrust that love which seems to be sustained by the hope of obtaining some other reward. The reward of love is the object beloved. It needs no other cause and no other fruit itself; I love because I love; I love that I may love.
November 20, 2011
I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
November 13, 2011
Among all means of liberation, devotion is supreme. To seek earnestly to know one’s real nature – this is said to be devotion.
Shankara
quoted in The
Spiritual Heritage of India
November 6, 2011
The superimposition of the ego-idea upon Existence is our first and most important act as human beings. The moment we have made this central act of superimposition – the moment we have said “I am I, I am private, I am separate, I am an individual” – we have made further superimposition inevitable. The claim to individuality for ourselves implies individuality everywhere. It automatically superimposes a multiple world of creatures and objects upon the one, undivided reality, the Existence which is Brahman.
Swami Prabhavananda
in The
Spiritual Heritage of India
October 30, 2011
When you pray, go into a room by yourself, and shut the door behind you. Then pray to your Father, the hidden one. And your Father, with his eye for the hidden, will applaud you.
Matthew 6:6
in The Complete Gospels
October 23, 2011
Live in the world like a maidservant in a rich man’s house. She performs all the household duties, brings up her master’s child, and speaks of him as 8220;my Hari8221;. But in her heart she knows quite well that neither the house nor the child belongs to her. She performs all her duties, but just the same her mind dwells on her native place. Likewise, do your worldly duties but fix your mind on God. And know that house, family, and son do not belong to you; they are God’s. You are only His servant.
October 16, 2011
Purity of condict is the greatest purity. To think of God continuously, to worship him, to chant his name, and sing his praises – this is the best way of attaining the highest good.
The Mahabharata
Anusasana
Parva CVIII.12
See also
October 9, 2011
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
October 2, 2011
The more we grow in love and virtue and holiness, the more we see love and virtue and holiness outside. All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm – which it is in your power to do – and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you.
September 25, 2011
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
September 18, 2011
The gnostics, after having ascended to the heaven of reality, agree that they see nothing in existence save the One, the Real. Some of them possess this state as a cogninitve gnosis. Others, however, attain this through a state of tasting. Plurality is totally banished from them, and they become immersed in sheer singularity.
Al-Ghazali
in The Niche of Lights
September 11, 2011
There are no answers. Only choices.
Movie Solaris
September 4, 2011
In Thee, O Lord, do I seek refuge.
Psalms 31:1
August 28, 2011
Every problem is based on one
mistake:
We think Life is out to get us.
Thus, we prepare for battle.
Elsa Joy
Bailey
in The Uncommon Book of Prayer
August 21, 2011
This meditation is certainly not in itself a mystical or religious experience, not euphoric, not a sudden expansion into universal love or cosmic consciousness, not any kind of feeling or thought or intuition whatever. Quite the contrary, it is absolutely featureless, colorless, neutral.
Douglas E Harding
in Open To The Source
August 14, 2011
Love is not a feeling. It’s an ability.
Movie Dan in Real Life
August 7, 2011
But you cannot escape Self. You want to see God in all, but not in yourself? If all are God, are you not included in that all? Yourself being God, is it a wonder that all are God? There must be a seer and thinker for even this practice. Who is he?
Sri Ramana Maharshi
in Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
July 31, 2011
I knew not the reason I had come into this world. Nor, until I attained wisdom myself, was I aware from what Invisible Source my life flowed into the physical body.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
by Yogananda
July 24, 2011
An epoch will come when people disclaim kinship with us as we disclaim kinship with the monkeys.
July 17, 2011
There is no relationship between what is real and what you think is real.
A Course in Miracles
Lesson Number 45
July 10, 2011
For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depths of the all.
July 3, 2011
I face both God and my guru. To
whom should I bow first?
I bow first to my guru because he is the one who showed me the
path to God.
June 26, 2011
Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.
Buddha
On a wall at Hammond
Street Senior Center
June 19, 2011
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
June 12, 2011
Abandon all dharmas, and come to Me alone
for shelter.
I will deliver you from all sins; do not grieve.
June 5, 2011
Listen carefully,
Neither the Vedas
Nor the Qur’an
Will teach you this:
Put the bit in its mouth,
The saddle on its back,
Your foot in the stirrup,
And ride your wild runaway mind
All the way to heaven.
May 22, 2011
What you think of me is none of my business.
Terry Cole-Whittaker
book
by that title
May 15, 2011
Dare to know.
Sapere aude.
May 8, 2011
If you come across error, rather than uprooting it or knocking it down, see if you can trim it patiently, allowing the light to shine upon the nucleus of of goodness and truth that usually is not missing even in erroneous opinions.
John Paul I (Albino Luciani)
May 1, 2011
For money you can have everything it is said. No that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money.
April 24, 2011
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everthing must be said again.
April 17, 2011
Who’s to say what is “proper”? What if it was agreed that “proper” was wearing a codfish on your head? Would you wear it?
April 10, 2011
You don’t have to talk about God to be talking about God.
TZF
April 3, 2011
Que sais je?
What do I know?
March 27, 2011
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred, and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
March 20, 2011
All life FORMS pass through the gates of death; but LIFE itself does not.
March 13, 2011
Yoga is bending the outer to the inner.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
March 6, 2011
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
February 27, 2011
In a pond, koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world.
February 20, 2011
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
February 13, 2011
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
February 6, 2011
Like cars in amusement parks, our direction is often determined through collisions.
January 30, 2011
If you want to make the world a
better place,
Take a look at yourself, and
Then make a change.
Michael Jackson
song Man
in The Mirror
January 23, 2011
I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth.
January 16, 2011
Our mind continuously does this. We create and perceive our world simultaneously, and our minds do this so well, we do not even know it is happening.
Movie Inception,
speaking of dreams,
but is it equally true of our waking reality?
January 9, 2011
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.
January 2, 2011
Infinite is God,
infinite are his aspects,
and infinite are the ways to reach him.
Swami
Prahhavananda
in The
Spiritual Heritage of India
